I have not dropped off the face of the earth, but after several weeks during which my work ate me alive, I did go on vacation for a week. We’ve just returned from our sorely-needed escape to Seattle and neighboring areas of the Evergreen State (with a day trip across the border to British Columbia). We’re still sorting and editing photos, but I thought y’all might want to see the bookish ones first. You might […]
“Richer than I you can never be — I had a Mother who read to me.” —from “The Reading Mother” by Strickland Gillilan I actually did not have a mother who read to me. In our house, the parent who did the reading aloud was my dad. And once I learned to read for myself, before I entered kindergarten, I really didn’t want anyone to read to me. My mother’s eyesight was so poor […]
I’ve seen Ti, Jen, and Bryan tackle this “20 Questions About Me” thing recently, and I thought I’d play along today. I rarely do this meme-type stuff here any more, and it was a fun change of pace. Feel free to take these questions with you and answer them for yourself—I’d love to know what you have to say about them! HOW TALL ARE YOU? My driver’s license says I’m 4’9”. This is an exaggeration, […]
Today’s the day that some of us are taking Trish up on her invitation to share A Day in the Life. I’m reporting on the events. such as they were, of Monday, March 23, 2015. I had an amazing case of Sunday-night insomnia; I don’t think I slept more than 3 hours total all night, but since I got in some solid reading time after I gave up on sleep and got out of bed, […]
As some of you already know, my stepdaughter Kate started chemotherapy for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) at City of Hope Cancer Hospital on Tuesday of this week. She will be undergoing an intense treatment regimen for most of the next month–maybe less, possibly longer, all depending on how her cancer responds. Kate’s visitors are being strictly limited. I haven’t seen her myself since she was admitted to the hospital, and I’m not sure when I will, but […]
Some of you already know this, but if you hadn’t yet heard, we got good news on my husband Paul’s biopsies–both were negative. He is cancer-free. But the bullet that he dodged hit someone else, and he told me he’d much rather have taken it himself. I believe it. Many parents would say the same. This past Thursday, my 20-year-old stepdaughter Kate was admitted to our local hospital. Routine lab tests at a doctor’s appointment […]
I have a couple of pieces of news to share with you today! The test results that were supposed to come in on Tuesday didn’t get reported to us till Wednesday, but they were positively worth the wait. The biopsies of both the skin cells and the lymph node that Paul had extracted last week were negative. The melanoma was completely excised, and it did not spread. Paul will have more than 20 stitches and a […]
Today’s post was graciously approved by my husband, who will be spending this afternoon in outpatient surgery at UCLA Medical Center. “So, the skin cancer they removed 2 weeks ago turned out to be a melanoma. So now I have to go back and get a larger chunk cut out (the black outline). They will need to replace the skin with a piece from my upper leg. Fun. All this because I didn’t wear sunscreen […]
What I’m reading in print / on screen Well, I’m sorry to report that I followed up a good reading week with a week in which very little reading of any kind happened. I spent yesterday afternoon catching up with my feed reader, and ’m hoping to spend some time today reading Reunion by Hannah Pittard so I can get a mostly-timely review done for Shelf Awareness. I’m in one of those stages where there are actually a lot of books I’d like to […]
Until this past weekend, my last BlogHer Conference was 2010’s, in New York City. There are various reasons why I hadn’t returned since then, but they boil down to the conference getting bigger as my connections within its various sub-spheres became fewer. While my interest was piqued by the announcement that ticket sales for 2014’s tenth-anniversary event would be capped at 2500 and that it would be held just 300 miles away in San Jose, I didn’t decide to […]
I was at a big convention-type gathering this past weekend…and it wasn’t San Diego Comic-Con. I attended my third BlogHer Conference, after a three-year absence. I’m doing a Storified recap of the experience, in the tradition of my BEA Highlight Reel, but I’m breaking it into two blog posts so it won’t take up quite as much space in your eyeballs, or your feed readers. (Part 1 posted yesterday.) BlogHer14, The Personal Highlight Reel Recapping my third (and probably last) […]
I was at a big convention-type gathering this past weekend…and it wasn’t San Diego Comic-Con. I attended my third BlogHer Conference, after a three-year absence. I’m doing a Storified recap of the experience, in the tradition of my BEA Highlight Reel, but I’m breaking it into two blog posts so it won’t take up quite as much space in your eyeballs, or in your feed readers. BlogHer14, The Personal Highlight Reel Recapping my third (and […]
